The future belongs to crowds. Movements will be massive. The streets will rise and push

“The future belongs to crowds. Movements will be massive.
The streets will rise and push.”
– Mao 2: Don DeLillo

The streets around the world are pushing and pulling.
Middle Eastern countries such as Egypt, Tunisia, Syria lay
in tatters after there so called “Arab Spring”….only oil
rich monarchies remain propped up for the time being. The
Ukraine is now split apart with part of it being annexed by
Russia. The crowds sung and welcomed Russian troops, a
scene not to different from Hitlers invasion of the
Sudetenland in 1933. This was brought on by both internal
factors in the Ukraine and outside factors from the West.
The domestic issues in the Ukraine were the extremely poor
economy and crony capitalism. In our January issue we
highlighted the Ukraine as a potential hotspot as food prices
reached 44% of income. It is at these levels where people hit
the streets.

Outside intervention is also to blame in the crisis with
recently a high level official in the U.S. admitting that
billions had been spent to overthrow the regime and try and
bring the Ukraine into the NATO fold. The American military
industrial complex despite a 20 year diversion into the
“war on terror” could never quit the Cold War. The Ukrainian
cards have yet to be played on the world stage. The Country
is $30 billion in debt and there is no way the EU or the U.S.
has or will pony up that kind of money to bailit out. So for
future headlines, we need to be wary of “Ukrainian default”
and how that will affect markets.

The start of this century has been anything but calm and
prosperous thus far. We opened up with the 9-11 terror plots
and then the American invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.
We have seen an economic meltdown starting in 2008 that
continues with a tsunami of money printing to try and stop
the flow of the crisis. Japan and the U.S. are the major
culprits behind the global flood of liquidity which threatens
to entrench the “paper aristocracy”, which is basically
anyone with access to the printing press.

The middle-class is quickly being sucked down an economic
hole through inflation and unfettered low-cost labor moving
into the developed nations. The European Union is close to
tatters with major powers such as the U.K. ready to vote
themselves out. The southern European countries have 50%
youth unemployment going for close to a decade now and no
hope of any real economy breaking out.

In the U.S. we are in a calm before the storm. Rising
inequality and a full-stop on social mobility will take more
and more media headlines. For now, the U.S. is sedated by
dollar menus and sports,however, as the U.S. Dollar fades
as a global currency and the country wakes up to the
nightmare created by the government, the people will hit
the streets. For those of us who grew up in the Detroit,
Buffalo or the Cleveland’s of the country we have
seen the future and what de-industrialization brings.
Occupy Wall Street was just an insignificant shadow of what
is to come.